Rethinking Nat Poe Book Review

8/13/2019 Rethinking Nat Poe Book Review

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Rethinking National Power? From IR Theory

to Foreign Policy PracticeReview by Janice Bially Mattern

Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore

Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations: A Synthesis of Realism, Neoliberalism and

Constructivism. By Guilio M. Gallarotti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 315pp., $29.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0521138123).

In this book, Giulio Gallarotti ambitiously advances a project on power (p.

ix) that he began in The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics(2010). In that first work Gallarotti sought to specify a well-known phenome-non. In Cosmopolitan Power he builds on that project. He seeks to develop anaccount of how states can avoid the power curse; that is, how they can increasetheir power without undermining it through the very process of its augmenta-tion. The key, Gallarotti argues, is for states to pursue the right kind of power:cosmopolitan power, a combination of hard and soft power that does not relytoo heavily on either one. Whereas hard power compels through threat, softpower persuades weak states to emulate strong ones as the strong endearthemselves to the weak (pp. 2122). Since, as Gallarotti argues, hard power is afeature of Realist thought and soft power of Neoliberal and Constructivist

thought, making sense of cosmopolitan power requires a theoretical blendingof the major traditions in International Relations (IR). In this way, CosmopolitanPower takes up an intellectual position alongside other synthetic theories of IRlike Alexander Wendts Social Theory of International Politics (1999) or G. JohnIkenberrys After Victory (2000). It also takes up intellectual company with morepolicy-oriented works, like Joseph Nyes The Powers to Lead (2008). The bulk ofthe book is absorbed with developing and historically illustrating the specificprocesses and strategies entailed in cosmopolitan power toward the end of gen-erating a prescriptive pre-theory of Cosmopolitik.

Unfortunately, Cosmopolitan Powerultimately disappoints on both scores. As awork of theoryCosmopolitan Power is frustratingly thin and general to the pointthat Gallarottis argument (and thus the major contribution of the book) is diffi-cult to discern. While the problems begin with Gallarottis highly stylizedaccounts of Realism, Neoliberalism, and, especially, Constructivism, they becomemost profound when the reader tries to take Gallarotti on his own terms. This isso for several reasons. First, cosmopolitan power is a strange term. Cosmo-politan is generally associated with moral, ethical, and political claims aboutthe existence of a worldwide human community whose obligations to each othertranscend national boundaries. Without ever noting this meaning, Gallarotti usescosmopolitanism in a theoretical sense. His proposed theory of power iscosmopolitan because it attempts to cross paradigmatic boundaries that pre-

viously were fairly impenetrable, especially on the subject of power (p. 1).Second, this analysis of the concepts utility provides a dubious motivation for

this book. No serious Neoliberal theorist would deny, for example, the shadowthat material capabilities cast over the pursuit of gains from cooperation.No Realist would deny the importance of soft power in pursuing material power

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arrangements are crucial sites at which the shared meanings that constitute inter-national politics are constructed. Gallarottis assertion that contemporary realistsvenerate the role of hard power in international relations (p. 126) is a strawman against which the force of his argument is pressed. One need only recall

John Mearsheimers (19945, 2001) claim about the usefulness of international

institutions for great powers pursuing their interests to see that Realists certainlyappreciate the value of softer, institutional forms of power.

Third, the utility of the concept of cosmopolitan power is undermined bythe fact that it is virtually synonymous with smart power, the combined use ofhard and soft power. Gallarotti claims that his theory builds on the idea ofsmart power. Cosmopolitan power is different, he claims, because it crosses par-adigmatic boundaries (p. 1) but insofar as Gallarotti associates hard power withRealism and soft power with Liberalism and Constructivism, smart powertheorists have already crossed these boundaries. Moreover, he says explicitly,the idea of smart power...is the essence of the vision of cosmopolitan power(p. 38). The latter does not seem to offer anything new.

Because cosmopolitan power is virtually indistinguishable from smart power-and the Realist, Liberal, and Constructivist logics upon which it restsneitherthe theoretical principles Gallarotti introduces nor the mechanisms by which heindicates that cosmopolitan power operates are particularly novel or illuminating.

Whereas Gallarottis principles broadly reiterate uncontroversial assumptionsabout anarchy, security, and the importance of social context, his mechanisms,

which he calls signature processes of cosmopolitan power, are at once verycarefully derived and at the same time frustratingly commonplace (pp. 4346).

Specifically, Gallarotti argues that the use of cosmopolitan power dependsupon soft empowerment, hard disempowerment, and optimal diversification(p. 49). Soft empowerment, he argues, can raise the influence of nationsbecause endearment predisposes nations to the interests and goals of softpower nations (p. 49). This is advantageous because imperfect specification ofrequests and desires by soft power nations provokes voluntary compliance,

which is more enthusiastic than coerced compliance (p. 51). However, Gallarotticautions that soft empowerment can come with soft disempowerment becauseinfluence based on goodwill alone is fragile (p. 57). The second mechanism,hard disempowerment, refers to Gallarottis power curse, or the idea that thepursuit of power (hard or soft) can weaken states. But Gallarotti asserts thatthese weakening effects increase as nations come to bank more excessivelyon hard resources as a means of wielding greater influence (p. 52). In this way,the logic of cosmopolitan power ultimately tacks toward its last mechanism,diversification, that is, to the balancing of hard and soft power given the risks

of each (p. 55).Sensible though all this is, it lacks the sort of explanatory traction that

Gallarotti claims he will offer (p. 13) and it fails to provide the basis for derivingtestable hypotheses (p. 15). To offer either, Gallarotti would have had toundertake a more careful analysis of why, and under what conditions, softempowerment gives way to soft disempowermenta discussion that itself presup-poses a prior one about what might render a nation endearing or attractive toothers in the first place (cf. Bially Mattern 2005).

The theoretical and explanatory limitations are only amplified by the empiricalcases, where the distinction between hard and soft disempowerment all but dis-solves. Nowhere is this more striking than in the last case, American culture as

soft empowerment. There Gallarotti focuses on what he calls eight chariots ofAmerican culture (pp. 231239). What Gallarotti fails to note, however, is thateach of these chariots leaves as many groups resentful of American culture as

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adventures but also US culture and what they see as its imperialist tendencies,that culture surely generates not just soft disempowerment, butas demon-strated by the war on terrorhard disempowerment as well.

Finally, because Cosmopolitan Power offers nothing theoretically novel, it endsup disappointing as a policy prescriptive model. Gallarottis five prescriptions

for instituting strategies of cosmopolitan power (p. 69) seem to repeat lessonsalready clear to students of foreign policy: Power theories must be constantlyquestioned and power audits continually undertaken (ibid.); decision makersshould consider the manifold consequences of power-enhancing strategies(p. 71); they should think in terms of net rather than nominal power (ibid.);they should assess power based on outcomes rather than resources (p. 72);and they should emphasize diversity in power resources (p. 74). For such com-monplace suggestions to emerge from what is ostensibly a new and integratedparadigm of international politics raises serious questions about the value ofthis synthetic exercise (p. 11).

References

Bially Mattern, Janice. (2005) Why Soft Power Isnt So Soft: Representational Force and theSociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics. Millennium: Journal of InternationalStudies33 (3): 583612.

Gallarotti, Giulio M. (2010a) Cosmopolitan Power in International Relations. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Gallarotti, Giulio M. (2010b) The Power Curse: Influence and Illusion in World Politics. Boulder:Lynne Rienner.

Ikenberry, G. John. (2000) After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order AfterMajor Wars. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mearsheimer, John J. (19945) The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security19 (3): 549.

Mearsheimer, John J. (2001) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W. W. Norton.Wendt, Alexander. (1999) Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

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